I hid in the woods behind my house.
I could hear my mother yelling my
name. And I sat still and counted how many times she said it. "Skylar! Where are you?" And Sara, my next door neighbor, helped my mom. She was without a mother. Her cousins Billy and Cory told me once that her mother had her head cut off in a car accident. Sara had told them to shut up. I wasn’t sure if it was true or not. "Come back Sky!" Sara would repeat. Sara would run into the woods and look. I could watch where she went from my hiding place, and I could see the house. I couldn't stand to see my mother cry. But the funny thing was - even though I couldn't stand to watch – her crying would fill me up with love. So I continued to count. "Skylar! Come back please! I love you!" Two. I kept my two fingers out to remember the number. But in my head, I would come up with a number. When my mother - Sara calling for me didn't count - yelled out for me the exact number of times that was in my head, I would slide out from my hiding place and come down from a place that was a distance from where I had been hiding. That way I kept my hiding place secret. Sara scurried around in our backyard. I saw her check my parents' greenhouse. Saw her climb the nailed planks that led up to the tree house my dad had started and I had finished. "Sky?" she would call out before she got to the top or before the door to the greenhouse was completely open. Sara was cute, I guess. She was a year and a half younger than me. She had brown hair and she always put it up in two bouncy pigtails. I saw a picture of her mom once. They looked alike. I saw the way her dad looked at her - it was like he was looking at someone else. His wife I suppose. He would stare out the kitchen window when she and I jumped on her trampoline, and he would go away crying. I never told Sara I saw him cry. He missed her and everyday, Sara reminded him. I felt sorry for them. But it didn't matter. I was angry at Sara now the way she helped my mother. I felt this was a family affair. I didn't want an outsider to know what was going on. I didn't want anybody but my parents to know that I was running away. It was nobody else's business. I wish she would just leave me alone. Keep out of my business. Her and her dad were Jehovah's Witnesses. Her mom had been Christian. Every two weeks she would visit her grandmother - her mother's mother - and visit her grandmother's Baptist church. When we would play, she never mentioned God. I brought it up a lot. I would ask her the obvious Jehovah Witness questions: you don't celebrate your birthday? What do you do on Christmas? Don't you want to trick or treat on Halloween? She wouldn't answer. She went quiet or brought up something else to talk about. I could tell she was confused. That meant she had no right to try to fix my life. "Come out Sky! Let's play!" she yelled running into her backyard and checking out her own woods. I would cower in the bushes and watch. Afraid that she would see me as clearly as I could see her. I would cry and often, I thought about giving up. But it was too late. I had already run away. I couldn't go back now. I was afraid my mom really didn't love me. I was too ashamed of what I felt. She told me she did. Dad did too. She fed me. Her and my dad gave me a place to live. She washed my clothes. They bought me toys. But I determined how much they loved me by how many times they called out my name. "Skylar C. Parker. You come out here this instant or I'm going to call your father!" Three. Call him, I thought. See if I care. My number was ten: all my fingers. In the distance, I could hear Sara calling out my name. Sara didn't seem too sad that her mom was dead. She said she was too young to really remember her. She said her father made up for her mother. She said he protected her. "No one will ever hurt me as long as he's alive," she would say. I was envious. I never felt protected. So I waited - counting my name on my fingers. And I trembled and cried in the honeysuckle bush - afraid they would just give up.